Galaxy in your hands

I’ve reviewed quite a few products in the past, that’s right, but none would give me the same sense of pleasure that I’ll be deriving out of this review. The reason for this being is that I am writing this completely out of my own experience of using the product for quite a while now.

The product I’m talking about is this little gizmo I carry around everywhere, the Samsung Galaxy Mini S5570 aka the Galaxy Pop (in India). After my debacle with a certain Micromax phone, I’ve finally felt a sigh of relief using the S5570 for over a month now. In my personal opinion, it is the best budget Android phone available in the market today. How can someone come to such a conclusion? Well let me first list out the device’s specifications and then take you through the features and functionalities later on.

Samsung Galaxy Mini S5570 Specifications:

Network: 3G HSDPA 7.2

Operating System: Android 2.2 (Froyo)

Display Resolution: QVGA (240 x 320)

User Interface: Full touch

Connectivity:

Bluetooth - Yes (v2.1)

USB - Yes (v2.0HS)

USB mass storage - Yes

Internet HTML Browser - Yes

SyncML(DM) - Yes

WIFI - Yes (802.11b/g/n)

AGPS - Yes

PC Sync Application - Yes (Kies)

Camera: 3 Megapixels

Memory:

Internal – 164 MB

External – 2GB microSD included (extendable up to 32 GB)

Battery:

Capacity - 1,200mAh

Talk time - Up to 570 minutes (2G), up to 380 minutes (3G)

Standby - Up to 570 hours (2G), up to 440 hours (3G)

The specs speak for itself - the definitive Android phone that goes easy on your pocket. Usually, it is kind of difficult for all the features listed on the websites and phone boxes to materialize and actually give you the real deal when you switch it on. So, let’s get on with the review, the 2.2 Froyo runs smooth with a 600 MHz processor to back it up. I’ve read on a lot of forums that the phone wasn’t able to handle certain applications and 3D games but when I actually put the phone to test I found all those rumours to be untrue and the S5570 performed very well with applications like Winamp, Facebook, Adobe Reader, Skype, Photoshop and WhatsApp installed on it without any hassles. However, there was a lag in some of the games that were installed on it like Angry Birds and NinJump, they often slowed down especially when there was a high usage of RAM being shared by other applications. But, the key to this was a miracle application which you could find in the Android Market online, it’s called “Advanced Task Killer”. It helps kill multiple applications which are either inactive or running in the background; this really helps in clearing some memory as well as increasing battery life by a few hours.

The audio output from the phone was satisfactory as to what you could expect from a usual Samsung device, the headphones are exceptional though and you also have the freedom to try out your stock Bose speakers if you have one because of the 3.5mm ear jack. Perhaps the best part of the S5700 is the Internet experience, with 3G network support and extended connectivity options, the user gets access to blazing fast speeds. With so many features included, one might doubt the exterior quality of the device but rest assured there has been no compromise on the body of the S5570 (two drops on the floor say it all), the phone is pretty sturdy for its class.

To think I was about to get a Blackberry before buying the S5570. Although Blackberry phones are a class apart and exceptional with the BBM service, the Galaxy Mini serves the same purpose with a decent data plan. The Standby is the only feature of the S5570 that takes a downslide; the device would run a good two days if used with minimal features i.e. calling and messaging only, otherwise the phone runs for 24 hours with great difficulty when used with all its features (including internet and games).

The GPS is top-notch with Latitude and Navigation pre-installed on the device. It proved to be quite fast over either WIFI networks or over GPRS connections. Finally, talking about the camera – the 3MP camera is decent with Auto Focus and 3x Digital Zoom, it calls for some nice shots during daylight but takes a toss during the night due to the lack of a Flash in the camera. The Operating System should be upgradable to 2.3/2.4 (Gingerbread) and later versions in the near future as reportedly Samsung has plans to extend features for the S series in particular.

The S5570 is available in the Indian market for Rs. 8990/- and is the better choice out of the competition it has in the same range like the Sony XPERIA Mini Pro and LG Optimus. This phone would be the ideal piece of technology for newbies who are just foraying into the world of Android.

Some special mentions are the Swype keypad and the feather-like touch functionality of the screen, for which Samsung is well known for as they are the pioneers in touch screen technology through their earlier Corby models as well. Swype lets you connect one letter to another and form words instead of having to take the pain of tapping each letter individually (which I’m sure most people find difficult on a touch device) but with such a feature and a large screen display, texting isn’t a major issue here.

Overall, the Galaxy Mini S5570 is a Best Buy for individuals (like me) to experience Android technology and all its features while at the same time having the basic functionalities of a phone intact.

With remarkable performance and a good price tag, the S5570 scores a 4 out of 5 in my book. Highly recommended, take my word for it.

Happy (Not) to Help!

Happy to Help...yes the age of customer pampering and retention, You might as well take a dip into your pockets to fish out some extra pennies in order to meet your customers expectations rather than disappoint even one single fish out in the sea.

With technology evolving, so are people in the areas they have up there (their brains!, for the non-obvious thinkers). With all the sophistication going on, the age of CSR couldn't have picked a worser time to arrive. In fact, the evolution of technology was aimed at an equally sophisticated user for whom great things were made and further upgraded.

Now why am I giving all this gyaan over something that I don't even want to talk about? I don't know, but the deal is that customer service has become expensive, complicated and stupid.

Just the other day, I was trying to call customer care to deactivate a service on my mobile...this was easier said than done, I had to call customer care only to be stuck with this really irritating IVR which kept asking me to keep pressing buttons after buttons after buttons (now I would have been happier if that were a song by Nicole Scherzinger). Most of the times, it doesn't even give you the information you're looking for and god forbid you have the craving to talk to a customer service representative...because you'll end up spending eons trying to figure out which option leads you to talk to a real life human!

One fine day, I managed to get connected to customer care, now connected means that i got the option. Then I had to wait for another half century to get to talk to a representative...I waited and waited and waited...in between they (the IVR) have the audacity to tell me that I will get charged 0.50 paise for 3 minutes. Imagine that! calling customer care and paying for it!

Well so they decided to get their money's worth out of it and made me wait for something close to 20 minutes...after which I lost the patience and hung up (i had the patience to stay online for 20 minutes in the first place! beat that!).

By chance you happen to get connected to a human being, the amount of questions that the person bombards at you, whilst answering all those questions and confirmations you somewhere down the lane forget the query you had for the executive in the first place!

When Customer Care starts getting so complicated, I would suggest that people start honing their technical skills further and solve all the problems themselves.

The next time you see a television commercial with a cute little pug following a little girl around and saying Happy to Help!...know this...the girl grew up and the dog got tired of following her around!

The Google class

There was light, there was the wheel and then, one fine day there was Google!

"To search (something) on the Google search engine,", oh yes, it even has a definition on Dictionary.com. What I’m trying to say is that Google’s been the grand daddy of the Digital Marketing age we live in today and I’m pretty sure a lot of businesses wouldn’t have learned to mint money online without it.

The sessions by Mr. Zaeem Mirza, which were held over 6 sessions, were the talk of the campus. Mr. Mirza was also however soon known for his likeness towards punctuality where students tried entering the classroom late (for some, late was defined as close to 2 minutes), they were not allowed inside for what we may now call one of the most interesting classes that the students attended since a long time.

I, being a victim of such a case, was unable to attend Mr. Mirza’s first two classes (for which I deeply regretted for the remainder of the week). However, I made it to his third session on the second day and needless to say by now, I was quite impressed with the kind of information the man was churning out, some of which I had an idea about earlier but was crystal clear about it after the sessions. But for the most part, I found it extremely intriguing to know about all the tools one could use to keep a track on their earnings online.

The few sessions that I attended threw some light on tools like Analytics, AdWords, Insights amongst other topics which discussed how marketers make money online.

Analytics was explained as a tool that is used to track and generate data based on the users that visit a particular web page or site. Everything, from demographic data to traffic patterns could be ascertained by using this super cool tool.

As seen above, Analytics let’s one measure their advertisement or website over a desired period of time with various aspects such as the ethnicity of the user, the type of computer he/she has been using, the time he/she spent on the site or viewing an advertisement and so on. All this data, can be tabulated as per one’s requirement and better strategic plans may be devised through the help of Analytics.

Google Insights was a more or less similar tool that was used specifically for measuring popularity and effectiveness of Search terms coming in from different geographic locations and through different cultures.

AdWords was taught using examples through Linkedin.com where we took this phone (Nokia N94i in our case) as our product to sell online and made a page for it. This is where we got down to business and talked about how companies and Google do business with one another. CTR, CPM and CPC were taught in detail. Further, Google keywords helped us in finding appropriate search related keywords for a particular brand or product so that it makes the user’s search more easier when he/she tries to get more information online.

Digital Media. A new platform which not only is opening new avenues but is also bringing the people of the world closer to each other, now one wouldn’t even start to imagine in how many ways. Social Networking was probably the ultimate breakthrough in the digital space during the past decade with popular websites like Facebook and

Twitter taking the lead. You know that there’s bound to be big business involved when there’s a fresh industry out there which has the potential of attracting sellers, consumers and marketers all on to a single podium. It is evident that marketers will shift focus on to this arena because look around, you want to convey your message to people and where are all the people? You find no one, because all of them are online! That’s the place to be and make your voice heard. 90% of Internet friendly citizens around the globe use online channels to compare and find the best prices of a product before purchasing it. This is what Branding is coming down to, Differentiation - as in the actual sense, no other medium offers the power to analyze and educate yourself about the differences between competing brands as much as the online consortium does.

And that my friends, is just a glimpse of the glimpse (because I missed a few sessions) I got into the world of Digital marketing as taught by Mr. Mirza. Now, I seriously don’t mind getting into the company where he works in and get to learn a lot much more :P

What is Second Life?

Second Life is my new Blog, created with the aim of posting some professional type reviews, news and opinions on technology.

Why another blog? Well, because my other blog's got too much info on my life and people would obviously lose focus and get entranced with all the cool stuff that happens to me.

So, anyway...Second Life, all of us have two lives now - The real one and the virtual one. This part of the Internet would be focusing on the latter and expect some good stuff here that would also be fun to read.

I shall start this off by posting one of my assignments as my first article (now, you wonder if whatever I've said is credible or not ;) ).

Behold ------------ randum2d.blogspot.com